The present description relates generally to the field of managing retail products and services. More particularly, the present invention relates to a method and system for switching among applications in an automated management system for retail products and services
Marketing products and services involves a large number of tasks. Those tasks may involve budgeting, inventory, pricing, purchasing, etc. In turn, each of these tasks may involve various subtasks and/or manipulation of various subsets of data. For example, purchasing tasks may include management of item data, scheduling data, budgeting data, etc. for the items in various purchasing documents during various phases of the purchasing process.
Automated management systems for retail products and services may provide multiple applications for performing the various tasks associated with marketing products and services. While performing these tasks, users of the automated management system may need to switch back and forth or otherwise switch among the various applications. Switching among the various applications may be difficult depending on, for example, the number of different applications and amount of display area available for graphical user interface screens for each application, the number of different control buttons, menus, and icons associated with each application and the available space for the different control buttons, menus, and icons, etc.
There is need for a method and system for switching among management system applications for products and services that provides a unified framework for efficiently switching among applications and that is easy to use.